WHAT WE DO

As the first rapid response Fund on the continent, UAF-Africa adds value to the work of women’s rights activists and organisations through provision of critical financial and technical resources. At UAF-Africa money is recognized as a fundamental tool in protecting and advancing women’s rights and enabling their participation in crucial processes that contribute to shifting of power relations.

UAF-Africa is the only Fund on the continent that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year! Our high tech funding mechanisms ensure that we respond to most requests within 48 hours. We disburse funds to successful applicants within 1-5 days. UAF-Africa receives and processes requests in the 5 official African Union languages i.e English, French, Kiswahili, Portuguese and Arabic. Our office boasts of wide in house linguistic capacity allowing for greater efficiency and higher turnover of proposals.

The Fund provides financial support for strategic interventions to advance women’s human rights in situations of conflict; precedent-setting legal or legislative interventions and protection of women’s human rights defenders who are persecuted because of their work. Grant proposals must be strategic, unanticipated and time urgent, sustainable and supported by known groups.

UAF–Africa ardently believes in the power of women to activate social change. We recognize the importance of arming women with facts and figures to enable them challenge issues from an informed perspective. The Fund has positioned herself strategically to bolster women’s efforts, support them as agents of change and work with them to ensure deep and lasting transformation to an equal world for all.

1. Defending the defenders:

UAF-Africa provides urgent financial and technical support for the protection of women’s rights activists who are persecuted as a direct result of their activism. We recognize and support women’s rights activists and organizations whose lives are at risk because of their work in challenging patriarchy, fundamentalisms, harmful traditional norms and values or any other contextual factors that impact negatively on women’s rights or seek to subjugate women. Realizing that many women’s rights activists defend women’s rights in their individual capacities; to defend their own rights or the rights of other women, without necessarily being members of women’s rights groups or organizations, UAF-Africa supports women’s rights activists who, through their individual actions, can have an impact on the collective advancement and protection of women’s human rights.

2. Protecting women’s individual dignity, safety and autonomy:

UAF-Africa provides urgent financial and technical support for the protection of women’s rights activists who are persecuted as a direct result of their activism. We recognize and support women’s rights activists and organizations whose lives are at risk because of their work in challenging patriarchy, fundamentalisms, harmful traditional norms and values or any other contextual factors that impact negatively on women’s rights or seek to subjugate women. Realizing that many women’s rights activists defend women’s rights in their individual capacities; to defend their own rights or the rights of other women, without necessarily being members of women’s rights groups or organizations, UAF-Africa supports women’s rights activists who, through their individual actions, can have an impact on the collective advancement and protection of women’s human rights.

2. Protecting women’s individual dignity, safety and autonomy:

Women have the right to dignified and secure existence in a world free from physical, sexual, psychological and economic harm where they can determine how to conduct and exercise their bodily, sexual and reproductive rights in private or public spaces, during peace time and in situations of armed conflicts or political volatile situations.

UAF-Africa supports women’s rights organizations and women’s human rights defenders (this includes female identifying transgender persons, lesbians, bisexual and intersex persons) to advocate for and safeguard their rights to bodily integrity, autonomy, safety and dignity.

3. Justice and the rule of law:

UAF-Africa recognizes that legal frameworks and the rule of law are important tools for advancing and promoting women’s rights. Access to justice and the practice and implementation of the rule of law have contributed to women’s marginalization and secondary position in society owing to corruption, patriarchy, poor legal and social structures for justice including relaxed enforcement mechanisms. UAF-Africa supports women’s human rights defenders and organizations to engage in, challenge and influence processes that lead to the enforcement of justice and rule of law. This includes precedent setting legal and legislative interventions, review, enactment and implementation of progressive laws, challenging retrogressive laws, interpretation and introduction of progressive legal clauses which all ultimately strengthen the women’s voice and visibility while creating long-lasting and systemic change.

4. Economic Justice:

The reality of today’s world is that the imbalances of power in the economic realm ultimately transpose to imbalanced systems and structures in other spheres. Women’s socio-political, environmental and legal welfare are hinged on access to economic resources. The right to acquire and utilize resources including land, minerals, water and energy for economic gains has been indiscriminately applied to women in Africa. This has contributed to their disempowerment in various realms. Access to employment and increased and equal opportunities within the labor market are key drivers of gender equality. This is particularly relevant as the economic importance of the natural resource sector and within the extractive industry is growing in many African countries. However, the impacts of extractive operations are not gender neutral with women being the first to bear the negative impact of irresponsible extraction practices. The exploitative and ecologically destructive nature of the extractive industry leaves women in particularly vulnerable in many socio-economic and security fronts at the disregard of the multinational companies and state actors involved in the industry.

UAF-Africa supports women’s human rights organizations and activists who seek to address and overcome the defining factors that contribute to women’s economic stagnation and advocate for an enabling environment with just and equitable frameworks that promote women’s economic self-reliance.

5. Natural Resource Governance & Climate Change:

Natural resource governance, climate change and social justice interact in a circular fashion and at the heart of this are women’s rights. Women are critical to the management of and control of natural resources. Women are equally pivotal in climate change adaptation and mitigation processes because of their overwhelmingly close relationship with natural resources but also because of the knowledge, skills with regard to adaptation and environmentally friendly production of natural resource outputs.

UAF-Africa supports women’s rights organizations and women’s rights activists to advocate for their active participation and decision making in the governance of natural resources and the orientation and implementation of climate change policies and practices.